Saturday, April 2, 2011

Jacob Leshno (who is a fan of both market design and LCD soundsystem) writes to alert me to some stories about their "final" concert today, how scalpers using software bots acquired most of the tickets as soon as they went on sale, and how the band responded by scheduling more concerts.

Hipsters v. Scalpers: How LCD Soundsystem is trying to foil professional ticket resellers.
"But LCD fans were not left out in the cold. The debacle attracted the wrath of the band's charismatic front man, James Murphy. On LCD Soundsystem's blog, he wrote: "this here is just to say that we were more than taken aback and surprised about the speed of ticket sales for the april 2nd MSG gig, as well as the effectiveness of scalper pieces of fucking shit at getting their hands on said tickets before fans could, and it's knocked us on our asses."

"The market had failed in his mind. He told fans not to pay thousands of dollars to get into the Madison Square Garden show: "I will try to figure a way out to fuck these fuckers. NO MATTER WHAT WE DO, IT IS NOT WORTH THAT KIND OF MONEY TO SEE US!" Soon enough, he realized he had an ace up his sleeve. He flooded the market, adding shows, upping ticket supply, and hopefully pushing prices down. (Those shows will go on sale this Friday.)"